Nelson George Hosts ‘Brooklyn Boheme’ Screening Tonight

Just in time for Black History Month. Nelson George’s documentary, “Brooklyn Boheme,” is a celebration of Fort Greene’s emergence as a cultural Mecca — even before Spike Lee and Chris Rock gave that Renaissance its face.

The documentary, which bows on Showtime on Wednesday night after a screening and Q&A tonight at Long Island University, focuses on the black middle class community that lived there in an effort to preserve the history of this era as gentrification shifts the culture of the neighborhood.

Mr. George saw Fort Greene go from a cultural center for the black artistic collective that lived there in the 1980s and ’90s into the diverse residential area of today — and Mr. George is the perfect messenger because he saw it all.

“When I grew up in Brooklyn, white people were running away from Brooklyn as fast as they could go,” he told the Web site, Loop21. “Then this change happened. Really, It started with Williamsburg, in a way, making Brooklyn hip for white people again. Now it’s spread out to all of that part of Brooklyn. People go to Bushwick to hang out. What?!”

Like Harlem, Fort Greene became synonymous with the black community though its strong black middle class, though Fort Greene experienced more of an artistic explosion rather than an intellectual one. But nothing was by design; the artists, musicians, writers and poets there that expressed a diverse range of ideas and influences were neighbors who inspired each other.

The film features some of the entertainment world’s biggest African-American celebrities, many of whom flocked to Fort Greene though after Mr. Lee popularized it.

“I was renting a duplex around the corner from Spike Lee, a wanna be filmmaker I’d met once through a friend,” Mr. George noted on the Kickstarter page on which he raised funds to finish the movie. “Spike’s breakthrough film, ‘She’s Gotta Have It,’ not only put him on the map, but shown a spotlight on the community of young artists already there and made Fort Greene/Clinton Hill a magnet for emerging actors, musicians, visual artists and designers from all over the country. Rock star Vernon Reid, comedian Chris Rock, actress Rosie Perez, visual artists Lorna Simpson and poet/actor Saul Williams were just a few of the wave of talent that would be seduced by the beautiful brownstones and the feeling of artistic community.”

The documentary also offers a glance into other artists who carved out their own niches within the community. This includes people like musician Talib Kweli, writer Kevin Powell and commentator Toure. Learning about these people adds a wider scope and depth to a community that is often narrowly viewed through the few that made it into mainstream culture, letting viewers of the documentary see the larger subculture of Fort Greene’s past.

Seve Chambers is a journalist based out of Brooklyn. He has previously written for The Wall Street Journal and has reported on Brooklyn Cable Access Television. He is a lifelong resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

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Get news about Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in our daily roundup, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s summer slate of youth-oriented programs and the third annual Art of Brooklyn Film Festival coming to St. Joseph’s College in Clinton Hill.

In today’s daily post, you’ll find news on the spring opening of the Fort Greene Artisan Market, a Pratt Institute student artwork display at a Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan and a new recording studio in the nabe.

In this crime report, locals told police that their belongings were stolen from cars and trucks, their homes were burglarized and their bank accounts were used in unauthorized ways. Also, disputes between significant others resulted in violence and robberies last week. The trend of robberies on the B38 bus continued last week, with another incident on May 4 marking the tenth such robbery in the precinct this year so far.

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